the newspaper business

This one is student produced.

This summer, the School of Broadcasting and Journalism at Western Kentucky University hosted a workshop in conjunction with the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund that helps students learn to produce content for the web.

Story: Text and art

Video: High quality, well produced

Map: Interactive

Graphics: Chart

Timeline: Interactive with photos and text.

Congratulations to Nick Bergus, Olivia Hubert-Allen, Mathilde Piard, Michelle Rindels. Just one thing missing… and “about us” page!

There are three other multimedia stories here.

 I’m anxious to see electronic paper in person. I hope I get the chance since it appears to be the future of newspapers.

Electronic paper technology, one of the newspaper industry’s most exciting innovations, could be available to newspapers as early as 2009. Ryosuke Kuwata, vice president of E Ink Corp’s Asia Pacific region, revealed today in an interview that developers are getting close to unveiling the technology.

I’m not sure I buy this assertion:

Kuwata says US newspaper companies have been ahead of the game, pursuing electronic newspaper technology before Japanese companies. European papers, he says, have “just began to move.”

If they are “ahead of the game” they are keeping awfully quiet about it. Since there is no competitive advantage to being the “first”  seems that news would be pouring out.

If you are interested in how this might impact newspapers, click here.

Agency wants bigger bus fleet
GO bg seeks $878,000 in grants

Agency wants bigger bus fleet
GO bg seeks $878,000 in tax money

Which is more accurate? I wish the Daily News would stop referring to money obtained from taxing citizens as “grants.”

Earmarking is starting to gain some traction as being a no-no at the federal level.  Earmarks are special projects slipped into highly important,  sure-to-pass legislation at the last minute. But these “earmarks” at the federal level become grants at the local level.

The transition from “bad” (earmark) to “good” (grant) is made possible by your local newspaper.

BTW: neither of our Senators are disclosing their earmarks, nor revealing if they have any earmarks.

Lou Heldman is Distinguished Senior Fellow in Media Management and Journalism at Wichita State University. He is retired president and publisher of the Wichita Eagle and Kansas.com.

In nine months since I was carried from the bloody arena of the newspaper business and ascended to the ivory tower, I’ve gained this perspective: Most newspapers don’t need the best new idea to grow their classifieds business. They mostly need to get better at executing what they already know. 

He then offers his “wish I would have done it” list.PS: just to clarify, I am a newspaper relic too!

Proof positive that most newspaper publishers and editors are stuck in the old way of delivering news. You probably read the same story on E & P online that I did. Hoosier newspapers were in the “run the presses and deliver the paper” mode.

Editors and circulation officials, who contend the rain-soaked area is in its worst natural disaster ever, say delivery problems have mounted due to roads closing and opening without warning…

One newspaper who normally doesn’t publish a Sunday edition, was forced to do web updates. I have the impression that if the newspaper had a Sunday edition, it would have been their emphasis - not keeping the online newspaper as current as possible.

Why is this? Why are newspaper editors and publisher in the mindset that delivering a print “disaster edition” is relevant or necessary. Even going up in pages and bragging about it. Like four more pages with twelve huge pictures is relevant.
Yes, it will win you awards at the state press association, maybe even a national award, maybe even a Pulitzer.  But to what end?  Getting accurate information to the public should be the end. The means should be the online newspaper.

My suggestion would be that when a wide-spread natural disaster hits, the whole print edition gets chucked immediately. Canceled.

Buy as many TV and radio spots as possible and go wall to wall with your newspaper’s URL.
If reporters are stranded, let them phone it in - with video.

 We had one staffer, a reporter who had to be rescued by boat [on Saturday] and her vehicle floated down a river,” Syse recalled. “It washed up on dry land and she came back to work on Monday.”

What a great first person story. But it wouldn’t see the light of day in the print edition because there are only just so many such stories that will fit and the precious space won’t be used on an employee of the newspaper, unless the staffer died.

There is a certain thrill of moving a newspaper to Starbucks. Think of the stories for the kiddles of the Great Flood of 2008 and how the paper “got out” from Starbuck’s.

“We could not get into our offices on Saturday,” said Editor Scarlett Syse of the 17,000-circulation Daily Journal in Franklin, Ind. “So we sent someone in to collect laptops, Rolodexes, and digital cameras and set up in a Starbucks for a few hours.”

“No one around here has ever seen flooding like this. It is the 100-year storm you always hear about,” says Tim D. Smith, circulation director for The Herald-Times of Bloomington and the Reporter-Times of Martinsville. “We have had carriers wading up to their chests to deliver to racks, they are really troopers.”

You betcha, and customers would have to wade through the same water to buy a paper right?

Chuck the print edition.
 

Keep carriers out of harm’s way. Smith went on to say only 25% of the Martinsville subscribers got their paper. They have 60 youth carriers and he asked them to wait for HOURS to get a newspaper to deliver.

In Columbus the story was the same, short staff, very late delivery (some next day.)

And for what? Just to have ink on paper? It just doesn’t make sense. It’s old school. It’s typical of newspapers.

During a wide spread disaster throw everything you have at the web edition. Put the press guys on the phone - or send them out with their personal phones (with video) in their big pickups and ask them to shoot and send.  Ask the graphics department to start surfing and researching and mapping and calling friends and family. Get ad staffers to grab their phones and laptops and start posting to a common blog. These editors that found themselves “short of staff” meant they were short of people who are on the newsroom payroll.

If they would have looked at an employee phone list, they might have found a great wealth of information from people just dying to help tell the story.

Instead, editors go into the tower, pull up drawbridge, and every 24 hours throw a message in a bottle into the water hoping somebody will find it and read it.

Will you give me a break? The publisher of the Arkansas Gazette is upset that somebody is linking to their classified ads. Just linking, not taking them, just linking to them.The fact that it’s Wal-mart has the publisher in a snit.Wal-mart has joined Oodle.com and apparently the Gazette agreed to let Oodle link to their content

Oodle uses a standard programming protocol to seek permission rights for searches and indexing of advertisements. If a Web site does not provide permission to make its content available to other sites, it will not be added to Oodle’s index.

So what is the big deal??? All the search engines link to their content! Why does it bother the publisher that Wal-mart is linking to their classified ads?

“I don’t think that is necessarily true,”Smith said. “We haven’t given anyone permission to lift information from our site and move it to their site.”

Hello? Oodle doesn’t “lift” your content, they link to it. That’s the way “this internet thing works.”
As soon as I heard about Oodle, I told our online manager to join and get in on the deal. I want the Daily News classified ads to be spread far and wide. It’s good for the customer. It will make classifieds work even better.

Last time I knew, making your ads work better for customers is a wise business choice.

Rob Curley was the emperor of all things related to newspapers doing cool stuff on the web.

He started at the Lawrence, Kansas newspaper (about the size of the Daily News) and did some very cool stuff. He had one standing order from the publisher (who at that time didn’t even do email.) Don’t loose money.

So he hired a bunch of people and off they went to reinvent newpaper’s online presence. They didn’t loose money.He built a helluva reputation. He was in high demand as a speaker at newspaper conferences. He talked to a lot of people. He didn’t wear a suit - or tie - he usually had on a tee shirt. He said “sucked” and “fuck” during presentations - a practice that was (and is) unheard of coming from the podium at a newspaper gathering.

Curley was a for real guru. Fast Company magazine adored him. The photograph showed him smirking in front of a huge pile of burning newspaper bundles.

Scripps decided he was just what they needed in Naples Florida - and away he went, taking most of his online staff. There he launched a local, daily, web news program that was touted as the model for newspapers everywhere. I suspect the “don’t lose money” guidances was not in effect with Scripps.

Curley soon left for the WashingtonPost.com with a high-flying title. His promise was to make the WaPo online editions “hyperlocal” the hottest buzz word he could think of .

Recently it was announced that he left the WaPo.com for Las Vegas. The WSJ.com is reporting today the emperor has no clothes. Others who fell all over themselves annointing him, have now abandoned his teachings and are pointing out his flawed plan

For believers in the power of rigorous local coverage to help save newspapers, the Washington Post’s launch of LoudounExtra.com last July was a potentially industry-defining event. It paired a journalistic powerhouse with a dream team of Internet geeks to build a virtual town square for one of Virginia’s and the nation’s most-affluent and fastest-growing counties.

loudounextra.washingtonpost.com

Almost a year later, however, the Web site is still searching for an audience. Its chief architect has left for another venture in Las Vegas, and his team went with him. And while Post executives say they remain committed to providing so-called hyperlocal news coverage, they are re-evaluating their approach.

So Rob Curley is off to cash in again with a new employer. He took most of his staff (do you see a pattern here?) Apparently Las Vegas had a pretty good online staff already, and he is taking nine folks to join them.He should cash in whenever he has the chance. Some guys get rich not by what they know, but by what others think they know.

It’s supply and demand. But newspaper publishers need to use the same skepticism with Rob Curley as they do with any other single evangelist. What is his track record? So far, I’ve seen a lot of cool things that don’t make the newspaper money.

If that’s a good criterion for being a guru, drop me a note.I’ve got a ton of great ideas that qualify.